


Steadfast

by sageofchaos



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageofchaos/pseuds/sageofchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How long do ducks live anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steadfast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Waterfall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waterfall/gifts).



> _Once upon a time, there was a little toy soldier. He had only one leg, unlike his brethren, but in that he didn’t mind, because from his place he could see a paper ballerina, who also only stood on one. Though he couldn’t speak to her, he knew they shared the same sadness, and his love for her sustained him._
> 
> _The soldier’s love spurred the jealousy of a goblin, who had the little metal soldier knocked off of the display and out into the harsh world. Swept away by circumstance, the soldier realized that he was being pulled further and further from his ballerina. And his only thought was of a day when he could return to the ballerina, no matter how fate designed to take him there..._
> 
> As he journeyed, the soldier did everything he could to avoid the thoughts he feared most...

**** Fakir looked around him, carefully studying the busy thoroughfare from under the brim of his hat.  He had meant to be inconspicuous, but he didn’t realize until he left the house that he looked wildly out of place, dressed nearly head to toe in black.  His hair felt too long and out of style compared to everyone else on the street, who wore fashions he couldn’t even name.  He felt like he had to adjust to the chattering of people again - and that there were too many of them.    

He didn’t see Autor at the restaurant, but at his usual table was an equally familiar hairdo, a pink bun that was hard to miss.  Fakir weighed his options, then shoved his hands into his jacket pocket and stepped forward.

“Pique,” he said.  “I bet you’re here for me.”  

“Actually I’m here for lunch, but I can deal with you too.” Pique said.  “Autor had to deal with a printing disaster across town.  So you’re doing business with us today.”  She looked Fakir and his questionable styling up and down, her eyes every bit as sharp as before, if not keener now.  As for the ‘us’, a small baby was swaddled and wrapped to her front, and drooled peacefully in sleep. 

“Fine.”  He yanked out the chair for himself.  

She hadn’t stopped looking at him.  “Are you aware you look like you just robbed a bank?”  

Fakir put an elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, staring pointedly out the window.  “This is off to a great start.  Happy I came.”

“Just some fun between two old school friends, sheesh.”   Something behind Fakir caught her eye all of the sudden, and she waved her hand up.  “There it is!  I ordered something for you.”  

He stiffened in his seat.   Though the roast was stripped of feathers and cooked to a crisp brown, he thought of nothing but yellow down, of glittering blue eyes.  He held his gloved hand up, stopping the waitress from setting it down in front of him.  “No.  I don’t want it.”  

The waitress froze in her place, and after looking for some kind of response from Pique, she shrugged and turned away.  In turn, the young lady scowled at Fakir.  “That was rude.”

“I didn’t come here to practice manners, nor to be the receiving end of Autor’s charity case.”

She sighed so loudly that the next table over looked at them.  “You never let up, do you?  Buying you lunch is not charity.  Besides, you really should eat _ something _ .”  Pique obviously had no problem chowing down the steak she ordered.  His stomach flipped at the thought of it.  “Your cousin frets all the time about your health.  I don’t hear the end of it.”  

“He’s not my cousin.”  Well, Autor wasn’t previously his cousin, not originally.  But the world changed, and some things changed with it.  Autor remembered Fakir strongly, and thus misremembered a closer cousinhood as justification why he needed to nose himself so deeply into Fakir’s business.    

The baby was a nuisance beyond the fact that she usually screamed a ton.  It reminded him of how he felt when saw the others he knew from school working at smitheries, selling at the market, as beaming brightly in pictures on the newspaper. That other girl, Lillie, was in America as a singer, and was even more impossible to avoid than before.  And now, people were having children.  Time marches on.  

Fakir stared at the back of his hands.  Meanwhile, nothing in his world had moved.  Nothing at all.  

“Anyways, Mr. Bank Robber,” she said, nearly sing-song as she cut into more of the steak.  “Isn’t it nice to get some fresh air, and see some people?  When was the last time you came out into the world?”   

“I came out here for the last meeting with Autor,” he replied crisply.

“A whole month ago.”  She narrowed her eyes at him.  “You been working hard on your next book, or what?”  

He didn’t answer her, and feigned interest in the bustling streets outside of the restaurant’s windows.  

“Okay, look.  For whatever reason, Autor isn’t good at being stern with you, so I’ll be.”  Pique put her elbow on the table as well and jabbed a finger at him.  “You are way,  _ way  _ behind deadline on that new book of yours.  The printing office is constantly swamped with people wondering what is taking so long in getting the next book out.  It’s driving Autor up the wall, trying to manage the fans, but he says it is important to give you creative space.”  

“I’m sorry about that, but I’ve told him a million times that he’ll have to wait.”  Fakir crossed his arms at his chest.  “It’s true about the creative space.  I’m still trying to figure out where the next part is going.”  

She laughed, and settled back into her seat.   “Is that the problem then?  Maybe if you wrote something  _ original _ for a change, you won’t be so stuck.”  

His attention snapped back to her.  “Excuse me.”  

“Your noble book series about a boy locked in a tower and a girl who fights dragons and demons and whatever else trying to save him.  Neither of the characters ever make any progress, though.”  Pique shook her fork at Fakir.  “And  _ every _ book you make things worse and worse on the poor girl and send her even farther away from her goal.  It is pointlessly cruel, not to mention that fans know by now that with every new installment of the series, after all of the adventuring she does, you undo all of her progress and send her back to square one.”  

His expression darkened.  “That’s not true.”

“Just like a man to think,” she said, her nose up.  “That’s  _ exactly _ why I don’t like those tacky books of yours.  You always have the girl chasing after Mr. Hero.  When does he do anything to lift a finger for her, besides writing a dumb letter or two?  While she fights dragons, because  _ apparently  _ she has to do all the hard work here?  Where is the fairness in that?”  

“I-”  Fakir stood up from his seat, the wooden legs scratching against the floor.  “I don’t believe that at all!”  

“Yeah right.  No wonder nobody at school ever wanted to date you.”  Her face was beet red, and she seemed entirely too upset over this topic.  “All you do these days is stew and mope and lock yourself up in your house with that old duck of yours.  You make no effort at all to go out and talk to people.  Autor says he doesn’t even see you out on the lake anymore, which is a waste of that nice backyard if you ask me.”

His hands clenched in hard fists, pressed against the table. “That is none of his business, and none of yours.”  

“Because it’s his business, it’s my business.”  Her purple eyes stared him down, without any concern about the spectacle being made at the restaurant.  “I thought this behavior was something you got over years ago.  You make everyone else worry and work hard to make you happy, and then snap at them for even trying to care.”  

That was enough.  Fakir shoved the chair back into its place, and took a step back from the table and towards the door.  “I don’t need to sit here and take this.  You don’t know anything about me, or my story.”          

“Come back with a finished book then,” Pique said.  “And prove me wrong.”  

 

\----

Home sat away from the village - just beyond those gates, in a dale a mile off of the main road.  Karon had offered him a place to stay, but Fakir had been adamant, and used what he had left of his parents’ savings on it immediately.  No other house would do, not when this one had a gem-blue lake at its back, and the privacy that he required.  

And yet Fakir looked over his shoulders as he approached his front door, checking the trees along the dirt path for shadows, at the flower beds and short stone walls for anything out of place.  The water of the lake beautifully reflected the sky and the clouds, and not a drop upon its surface rippled with disturbance.  He looked away from it, and opened the brass lock of his door.  

“I’m back,” he said, though softly.  No reply.  He pulled off his boots with haste and set them by the door, hurried through the low, dark corridor, to the back where his kitchen and dining room occupied the same large, oaken space.  He stepped as carefully as he could, towards the white bundle at the opposite of the room.      

She seemed at peace - she lay by the balcony window, her face folded into her wing and curled into a faded bedsheet.  He didn’t breathe until he saw her feathers ruffle with breath, and heard slight wheezing from her beak.  Fakir put a hand behind him, blindly searching for a chair, and sat without taking his gaze away from her.     

“Ahiru,” he whispered.  He brought up his black-gloved hand to her small head, and with the lightest touch, scritched the tuft of feathers at the crown of her head, the way she had always liked.  He worried she would wake, but she sighed in her sleep, and nestled deeper into the warmth of the rolled up sheet he provided for her bed.  The balcony window blew in a small breeze, open wide enough for a bird to fit through, though she rarely went outside anymore.    

He was absorbed , but the little breeze knocked a piece of paper out from under her nest and towards his elbow.  Fakir drew his hand back, and lifted the paper up.  It was shaped like an envelope, though rather than postal white, this was black, and bore no address.  The seal on the back was a flat, blood-red circle of wax.  

_ That old duck of yours.  _  Pique’s words ricocheted back through his mind as he considered the omen-colored letter.  He bit back a curse.  If only she remembered Ahiru, she would not had been so cruel.  And if only he hadn’t left the house, such a damning omen wouldn’t have flown into this window.  

He carefully shut the glass, not allowing any more breeze to disturb him.  The letter he simply folded into his pocket, as he didn’t have the heart to do more with it now.  He leaned back into his chair, and put his palms to his face.  He had made a mistake to leave here at all to go into town.   

How could Autor and Pique even ask him about his book series?  Of course he wasn’t writing the next novel.  How could he waste his time, not when he was unsure of how much time there even was left?  He sat like that for a while, with only his gloved hands and her sleeping figure to consider, until the sun started to fall below the tree line.  

So Fakir resigned himself to getting up, and start lighting the fire and candles.  When Ahiru was to wake up, bright and chirping for dinner, she should not see him sitting in the dark like this.  As he leaned over his writing desk with a lit match, his other palm touched the table, only to greet a wet puddle.    

The surface of the table was spotted with little pools of water.  Central among them, unfortunately, was a special edition copy of the latest book of Fakir’s series.  Autor had made this prototype so he could charge some copies of the series at a premium, and Fakir promised him, over a month ago, that he’d read this version and make sure the illustrations or copy were not amiss.    

“Ughn.”  The sides of the pages were sloppy and wet, just old enough that they started to stick together.  He had a few ropes for drying vegetables up near the fire, and cleared one off, grabbed a flat hook, and balanced the open book off of it instead.  He suspected it was still too late.       

He wondered if some water had splashed out of the indoor pond - the little basin he made for her to float in when she was too tired for the outdoors.   But that wasn’t possible, the water was still too far away from his desk.  Perhaps just having the pond in the house must be messing with the humidity.  Either way, the damage was done.  

He crossed his arms, and looked back towards the window.  Fakir had meant to reread his collection of stories tonight, but he supposed he really didn’t need to.  Pique had been right.  He knew it as he watched Ahiru sleep in silence, across the room and entire worlds away.

Fakir wanted nothing more than for Ahiru to come to him.  But that had been a selfish thought, one he vowed he would never put real stock in.  Yet everything he wrote was ultimately that one, cowardly wish.  He made her a promise that he could be alright no matter how they were, and he couldn’t keep it.          

He picked up his pen.  He thought not of himself, of his sadness and his yearning and the novels that those feelings had produced.  Fakir cast himself as her, and her thoughts, and put it all to script.  He thought of the bay window and the pond beyond it and put it into words, described the cool water, the breeze, the warm, glittering sun. 

He wrote of how he must look, in her cool eyes, as she watched him at work on the dock.    

She was the one who felt trapped, and had no means of finding him.  This time, he needed to seek her.

It was a glow that caught his senses, a warm gold, a scent like the spring and of soft pillows and water lilies, all at once.   

He felt these sensations like he was there, and closed his eyes to feel them even deeper.  It was like drifting off to sleep, except he created the dream as he wrote, until he didn’t feel the scratch of paper under his palm anymore, or the sharpness of his chair.  

 

\----

 

He dreamed of a pond.  

Fakir had been laying down, but he pressed a hand behind him, and angled himself upright.  It was night, and mist rolled over the the water.  The moonlight got caught in the mist, and a glow settled over the area.  Dazed, he watched over it, wondering how he had found such a beautiful place.  Then his eyes caught at the corner of the pond, and of a figure moving in the smoke.  Fakir fumbled to his feet and walked along the edge of the pond, pursuing the silhouette.   

She tried to go back on pointe, but could not.  She held on to the base of the tree, straightened her limbs again, and tried again.  She held, for but a moment, then winced and frowned, and lowered herself again.   

He ran forward.  Pond separated them, but he didn’t care, and ran through knee deep water on the straightest path.  That alerted the dancing figure to him, and she turned…

Her face.  It was her.  He froze in his place, unbelieving.     

“Ah…”

She grabbed him by the shoulders.  She searched his face frantically, like she had to confirm him as well.  “Spit it out!”  

“Ahiru!  My god.”  He pushed forwards and grabbed her,  A dream would be cold and unyielding, but she was warm, and clutched him in turn, her fingers digging into his sides.  

Eventually she stepped back, and thumped her fist against his shoulder.  “You are so  _ thoughtless!”    _

“How?  I tried so hard to protect you.”  

“You think I don’t know that?”  Her eyes were that same strong blue, staring him down, even as they were wet with tears.  “You have stopped doing anything.  You stopped going out and making friends or even just talking walks.  You were so worried about protecting me that you stopped doing anything at all, and if the cost of you trying to protect me is your happiness…”

“Those things can’t be separated,” he said flatly.  “If I can’t protect you, I can’t be happy.”  

“I don’t want that.”    __

“Ahiru, I made a promise to you.”  

“I won’t make you keep that promise.  I was stupid to accept it.”  She took his hand in both of her own.  “You didn’t know how hard it would be.”  

“I am selfish because I couldn’t keep that promise.  You wanted to be happy as you are, as a duck, and in the end I couldn’t give that to you.”    

“How can I be happy when you are so sad?” Ahiru demanded.  “Should I be happy with you breaking your heart over me?  Should I be happy when I do nothing but worry about what you would do after...after I...” 

He closed his eyes.  “I promised I’d never leave you alone.”    

“When I die, did you plan die too?”  She bowed her head, curling forward.  “Fakir…” 

It wasn’t the right thing for him to say, and he knew it.  Of course she had wanted him to be happy ever after, with or without her around.  In the end, he wasn’t strong enough to give that to her, but at least he could be honest.  He stroked her hair as she cried, cried out the five long years of stress and sorrow she must have held, as he had held it from her.

What he had thought was a dress was really a white sheet - the same white and blue spotted sheet he had rolled up as a nest for her, back on his bay window.  And her hair, he remembered it as short and thin, but he looked over her back and thought her soft coral hair was endlessly long and thick, especially out of a braid.  This truly couldn’t be his dream.  He wouldn’t have thought of his detail, and besides, she was older now, and his only imaginings of her was as she was, small and awkward back at the academy.  

“You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.”  

She brushed away at her tears with the backs of her hands, to little avail. “I’ve done plenty wrong, just mostly when you were asleep.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Your books.  I read all of them.  Everything you wrote, even the short stories in the newspaper.”   She pressed her forehead against his chest, leaning into him.  “I’m sorry that I got the pages wet.”

“I don’t mind.”  He smoothed her hair with his hand.  “Except, Pique said they were terrible.”

“Why would she say that?”

“Because the guy does nothing.”  

“Oh, yeah.  I was a little annoyed by that too,” she admitted.  “But only a little.”

“Only a little?”  

“Because he tried so hard.  He wrote letters to her, and went to great lengths to tell her how he felt.  Kept her in his thoughts, and believed in her.”  Ahiru lifted her face to his.  “And that keeps the heroine going.”  

Fakir leaned his forehead against hers.  “I meant to write something new.  But it seems I was writing it all along for you.” 

“I know.”  The tears welled up again, and rolled down her cheeks.  She put her hands to the sides of his face.  “I’m sorry that I can’t…that I make you so sad...”

He put a hand over hers.  “You shouldn’t be sorry.  I’m the one who can’t say anything without making you cry more.”  

He missed this part of her so much, how freely she communicated how she felt.  But it was so much harder for him to know what she was feeling as a duck.  He could only go by her miming and obvious cues.  Yet all along she had been trying to be strong too, for those five long years.  Was that so surprising, when she had been like that before as well?  

“Even if I could go back with you, there isn’t a place for me anymore.  I got too tall.  I try, out here at this pond, but I couldn’t be a ballerina anymore.” Ahiru wiped away her tears with balled fists.  “Or if I was, I’d probably just be the tree in the background.”

“Ballet didn’t seem to be in anyone’s cards in the end,” he said.  Fakir took her hands in his, tear-stained and all, and when he stood up, he helped pull her upright again as well.  He didn’t try to wipe away the tears at his own face.  He didn’t even know when he had started crying.  “I got rusty anyway.”

She had gotten tall.  Her eyes only barely hovered below his.  “Can we try it, Fakir?  See how bad we have gotten?”  

He put one of his hands at her waist, and held the other in his.  It wasn’t like their previous dances, full of grace and restraint.  She was barefoot and stumbled over a vine, and his unpracticed legs took a while to figure out how to coordinate again.  His hands clung too hard to her, and hers to him, as if n fear of being yanked away.  But they spun in small circles, together, hands together and leaning into each other. 

“When I dreamed of seeing you again, as a girl, I didn’t mean to be crying the whole time,” she said to him, eventually.  “I wanted to be smiling.”  

“You taught me this, a long time ago.  Sadness and smiling aren’t exclusive.”  He drew back from her, only a little, and for all the sorrow he still felt for making her worry about him so terribly, a small smile still drew at his lips.  She lifted a thumb to his face, to the corner of his mouth, like she didn’t believe it.  Then she laughed softly.

“That’s right.”  She smiled back at him.  The spins became shorter, and lazier, until they simply embraced, swaying under the light of the moon.     

And then a dragon flew overhead, and it became very,  _ very _ fairy tale-like.  Ahiru yelped and Fakir threw them both to the side, under the cover of a tree.  The beast swooped so low that the top of the trees shook and bristled against its underside, and besides the low roar of the monster as it passed, Fakir thought he heard the rustling of metal as well.     

“I’ve never seen  _ that  _ here!  A red dragon.  And it had a bunch of keys around its neck.”  Ahiru put a finger to her lips.  “Why does that seem familiar?”  

“I think I wrote that, in one of my books.”  Fakir put his hand to his belt, only to remember that he didn’t have a sword on him.   “Do you think there is a town nearby?”   

“I don’t know.  I just stay here.”  Ahiru spun around, looking at the landscape again.   “This is my dream, right?”  

“I thought so.  But we should check it out.”  He slipped off his jacket, and gave it to her.  It looked a bit silly, a long bedsheet dress and a cropped canvas jacket, but she accepted it gracefully, and looked beautiful.  She smoothed out the front of the jacket, but her hand paused over the breast pocket

“Oh?”  He heard a crumpling sound, and she pulled a piece of paper out of the jacket.  She lifted it up - it was a crisp, white envelope with silver filigree design.  “A letter?”  

“That letter?”  Fakir frowned.  “It was by your bed, but didn’t look like that before.  It was all black.”  

  
“That’s curious, don’t you think?”  She took the letter without concern away from Fakir, and sat upon a fallen log to open it.  He followed her, and sat beside her.  Unlike the envelope, the paper was crisp and white, and the handwriting upon it a bit weak and wobbly, like someone perhaps unused to script.  But it was legible enough.  

 

_ Ahiru, _

_ I hope this finds you well.  I do not write letters often, so I am not very good at them.  I still grapple at times with expressing myself, despite your best efforts otherwise. _

“Mythos?” Fakir whispered.  

_ It appears like someone in your world has been writing stories that have been introducing chaos into my realm of tales.  Dragons, skeleton soldiers, and more wander around, looking for a heroine to fight.  Do not fear for my people though - they are confused, but not nearly so much as these creatures.  The characters, even the dragons, seem forgetful and lost.  This is a powerful story, but it has no end, and so the players are aimless. _

Ahiru elbowed Fakir in the ribs.

He grunted.  “Keep going.”

_ If you were able to find these characters, and help them discover who they are, perhaps they can play out the end of their tale and give us peace.  Then they will have a home with us, here in this world of dreams.  This would be a great service you could do for me.  I have no way to pay back all of the joy you have afforded me.  But know my kingdom is open to you for as long as you need - you manage well enough to find your way here without me. _

_ Yours, _

_ Siegfried _

 

Fakir combed his fingers back through his hair.  “I guess this isn’t your dream after all.”  

“We are in the place where stories rest?”  She put her fingers to her lips as she thought.  “It looked so much like my first dream, of Mytho.  So I thought these were dreams.”  

“Might have been the same place all along."  He lifted his hands, and laced his fingers together for her to see.   “Maybe there is a third piece to you, besides being a duck, or being a girl.  You were so entangled a story that maybe tales and dreams can’t be removed from what makes you, you.”  

Ahiru twisted towards him, pivoting in her seat She lifted her wrist, and her fingertips brushed at the back of his hand, a light touch over the short, ugly scar, one that still twinged with old pain.  Her bright blue eyes met his, bold and honest, and captivating as always.  “Is that why you could find me?  Because you are tied to stories as well?”

He had thought he left that old power behind, and chose not to use it.  He didn’t want to dictate people’s lives for them, not when they were finally free of stories.  But Fakir carried proof of it in his scars, in the one on his hand, as well as the knight’s chest scar, which she knew he still carried.  He was forever tied to stories as well, separately through blood and circumstance. “Could be.”

She smiled at him, and leaned back in her seat.  “Then I don’t mind it here, Fakir.  If I could see you, and Rue and Mytho, and go on an adventure.” She grinned.  “Be a fairy tale detective.”  

He tilted his head at her.  “Where did you get that idea from?”

“Cause Mytho said I should  _ investigate _ .  It’ll be great, snooping around and meeting people and fixing problems again.”  She swayed in place, and bumped his shoulder with hers.  “Like old times.”  

“Do you think he meant it was only a job for you?”  

“You can come, sure, and it’ll be fun and we work together pretty well.”   But she paused in the middle of her thought.  “It’s just, should you?  What about your life in the real world?  I didn’t have any plans, obviously, but you have a house and your stories, and you have to take care of yourself too.”  

He was quiet.  “I won’t let you get rid of me now, no matter what.”     

“Alright...” she said, with a measure of hesitancy still in her voice.  “But if anything looks wrong with you for a second, I’m booting your butt back.”  

“I promise, everything will be fine now.”

“Okay.”  She shook her hair out, and a freshly determined expression set on her face.  “Okay!  Let’s get going then, to the town, and-”

“Ahiru, wait.”  He held her hand, and she sat back down next to him.  “How would you end my books?”

“I think Verity and Harding were always very close, but didn’t realize it.  Cause...cause his tower had been invisible the whole time, and near to her estate.  Old magic, maybe?  But something happens at that barrier, on both sides.  He’s finally fighting back against the witch who controls his tower, and she fights the old knight master at the base of it.  Cause of the fighting, the barrier gets really weak, and they feel they are close.  And she thinks that if he were there, there would be nothing in the world she couldn’t overcome.”  

Ahiru paused for a second, then, more softly.  “And at the end, when she reaches for him, she is so surprised and so happy when she finds him reaching back for her.”

Fakir smiled.  “Sounds familiar.”   

\---- 

The kid balanced on the short stone divider, looking down at the ground just a foot below her handsome little shoes.  She wobbled forward and warned her parents with an “uh-oh” a few times, but when they paid her no mind, she decided it was more fun just to fall into the wildflowers, bottom first, over and over again.  Arrondi’s little white dress was already streaked in green from the grass at the park, so it was not like there was anything left to ruin.  

Pique waited outside with the girl while Autor went in to deal with the old house.  He hauled in the bag of mail that accumulated at his office, and set it in the living room, along with all of the others.  He must have done some other things, maybe obsessively fussing with Fakir’s writing table again, or refolding all of the bedsheets, or other finicky things he was prone to doing when he thought nobody noticed.  It was a half hour until he returned again, long enough that the kid had worn herself out and laid herself out on the stone divider, staring up at the sky sleepily.  

“Looks like he still hasn’t come back.”    

“He was always a slave to fancy.”  He fixed his glasses, pressing them up his nose and shaking his head slowly.  “So much potential but so little discipline.  He never had the chance to learn true craft from a master.”

“Like you?”  Pique snorted and laughed.  “His books  _ still  _ bring in the best business your little press has seen, and they’re reprints.”

The corner of Autor’s mouth twitched.  “He just happened to hit on something that appealed to the young ladies of the town, and they are a more powerful economic bloc than I estimated.  Yet still, there isn’t a day that passes without someone asking after the last chapter of that series of his.”  

“So maybe write something about it in your newsletter.  Announce that there won’t be an end to that series.”  Though she was inclined to be just as sharp as he,   “It’s been a while.  Maybe it is time to put it all to rest.”  

“I can’t do that.  He still has the expenses paid on this house for another year.”  

“That’s not really the point.”  She crossed her arms.  “We can’t keep the house like this forever.  I mean, if I have to dust that place again, I’m going to scream and scream and I’m not going to stop.”

“Then don’t dust it.  But we can still keep it another year.”  Autor folded his hands behind his back.   “Or we can move in, and when he returns, we make him live in the basement and work on those stories on his until he’s paid back what he owes.”  

Pique’s eyes darted to the large house, quickly, and then back to Autor.  “Hm.  Well, while I like that idea,  _ a lot _ , I have to say.  You’re giving Fakir a lot of credit, saying  _ when _ he returns.”  She twisted her lips in a little frown, and swayed on her feet.  “He was a mopey guy.  Who’s to say he didn’t go to Paris and find a model girlfriend and start over, or something?”

“As his mentor and editor, I’ve thought about it.”  Autor tilted his chin up, and his glasses seemed solid white from the gleam of the sun.   “Everything he writes about involves two obsessions.  One is about women, as you noted  _ many _ times.  But other is about never having a home.  A heroine whose hometown turned against her, a young man whose home becomes a towering nightmare prison instead.  Even a dragon driven from his lair because his gold was cursed and became thorns.  Same with the kind old warlock, and the water demon, and so on, and so on.”   

He sighed, and with a small smile looked back at Pique, and little Arrondi on the ground behind her.  “I think the home he wants is maybe not a place, but something inside of him.  He is young and foolish, but he will figure it out.  And when he finds it, he will return.”            

“That’s not a good answer, and probably a bit more backhanded than necessary.”  She huffed, blowing her stray bangs out of her face.  “But as long as I don’t have to dust anything, I’ll go along with whatever.”  

The girl was on her back, waving her hands and feet up towards the roof of the house.  “Poof poof.”

Pique knelt down and slapped her hands against her knees a few times.  “Hey Didi!  Look alive!  Get up!  Chop chop!  We are busy people here and got a schedule to keep.”  

“Poof,” the girl repeated.  “Poof in the sky.” 

“Sounds good, kiddo.”


End file.
